I understand where you are coming from, but I don't think one can be as "black and white" re sub usage as you suggest.
I think that yes, there will be occasions when the young player should not be the sub and plays the entire games.
There will also be times, in terms of both the young player's development, and the team's interests, that the young player should be the sub.
It would be wrong to impose an inflexiblity on this, in my view. A correct balance between the two is the essence.
As an example of where the balance was totally thrown out the window: subbing Joe Richards with 47 seconds to go was both absurd and humiliating, and should never have taken place.
This was not an example of balancing the inexperienced player's interests with those of the team. I even suspected that the coaches forgot Joe was the sub, and suddenly remembered with 47 seconds to go.
Richard’s 47 sub was clearly a mistake that the coaches would own. He was either forgotten about in the madness of the Sydney carnage or they were trying to get him on but couldn’t get the player off because play was away from the interchange which happens a lot.
We went from comfortably winning the game to being run over very quickly. I’m sure puzzle pieces were being thrown everywhere in the coaches box.
It wasn’t a deliberate action and the optics looked bad with the loss. Pretty much summed up our season of learning to be better.
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